


To Trust the Dragon

by Raven_is_blue



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Korean wizarding school, Nagini is Korean, Skender was lying, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 07:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17055416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_is_blue/pseuds/Raven_is_blue
Summary: She had a dream, but she chose the duty. And one day she met this broken boy and the duty wasn't important anymore.





	To Trust the Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of notes, but hear me, please. 
> 
> Maledictus can be a thing in the wizarding world, but here it's just a cover story, because, really, why wizards would pay to see a woman transfigured into a snake? Anyone with a wand can do this. But a Maledictus? Ancient curse? Uncurable curse and a beautiful, exotic woman? Yes, that is a something worth a penny or two.   
> Here Nagini is a Korean woman, as she was in the movie.   
> And I tried to stick with that.   
> Korean wizarding world is a creation of Gabby - [wizarding school AU](https://kpopmarvelharrypotterstarwars.tumblr.com/post/180342155286/bts-harry-potter-au-part-1) \- and she was the most helpful when I was struggling with this story. 
> 
> Lots of thanks and hugs for [Akashne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akashne), who poked and poked and poked until I just sat and write her a story.  
> And my amazing beta - [Erulisse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erulisse17), who whipped words and shaped sentences, so now it seems like I know what I'm doing. 
> 
> If you will find any mistakes, it's on me. Because I was too stubborn or added something not approved beforehand.

When Young-ae was a little girl, she sat with her Gramma and watched her fingers dance with needles and red silk, and she listened to her soothing voice telling stories about souls and magic.

When Young-ae was a little girl, she loved to sit in her father’s lap and listen to his stories about the soul and mind, magic and body.  

He wasn't the best in the country. Yes, people often chose him instead of pricey Japanese healers, but he was just one of many. But for Young-ae, he was a hero and the best healer in the world. And her biggest dream was to be just like him.

When she got her Mir admittance letter, she danced with her father and promised to fulfill her dream. She traveled to Busan, high on the Geumjeong Mountain to became Blue Dragon herself, to become a healer like her father. She excelled at healing from the first lesson. But she loved Transfigurations and Charms too and, when 4th-year professor Yang Joo-eun started to teach about animagi, Young-ae soaked up both knowledge and skills. Being a snake animagi helped her with seeing auras and sharpened her senses, in the end, she was getting closer and closer to her goal.

But then, in her 7th year, the Head of Blue Dragon House, Cha Kwang-seok, called her into his study. He talked. She listened. He asked. She hesitated.

But occupation was ripping her country apart more and more. But life didn't stop and, eventually, she was persuaded.

The last two years of school she learned not only how to heal and soothe, but also how to kill and maim. How to disguise herself. How to hate herself. How to listen in the shadows and being invisible in daylight. She learned then that she will never be a healer.  But she hoped that sacrificing her dream would heal her country. So, the day after graduation Young-ae became Nagini, an observer, a spy, a wasp's sting hidden in fig basket. She trusted her dragon of blue and she became what was needed - docile snake, passive and yielding, waiting and watching.

 

Young-ae first saw him when the Circus was in New York.

She was preparing for her performance, watching the crowd, estimated their hunger for her pain. Did she need to cry when letting the snake out? Or just an enticing smile and little sway of hips? She was listening to Skender's shouts when she saw him. He was hiding there. Watching with rapturous intensity, with focus so sharp that it seemed to warp reality around him. He watched the freaks in the circus as if he was searching for something, measuring them with his dark eyes, watching them even when his back was curved and hunched to make him smaller.

“And now, presenting… Nagini!”

Her magic took her and she smiled a little, shimmied her hips for the drooling riffraff in the back and then she glimpsed him again.

His aura was smothered with shadows and blacks. Dark clouds gripping his head, clasping spasmodically at his shoulders, curving them down, down, down with inhuman strength. Tendrils of overwhelming sadness and pain crushing his heart. Underneath all of these, small, dirty greens tried to peek out, to shine a little, only to be muddied down and killed.

If she was human, the moment she saw him, if she was human then, she would have cried for him. But snakes cannot cry.

The Circus was in New York for a week. And for a week she watched this boy as he watched them all. She saw him carefully petting the firedrakes kept by Skender. She saw him struck with awe as he studied the zouwu’s eyes and its silky tail. She saw him watching her metamorphosis with solemn eyes. She saw him and his gentle soul and she remembered all that she learned about Bunridoenyeong.

Cha Kwang-seok told them it was when a soul was so tormented that it ripped in half, not by their own will but by an outsider. He told them that it happened mostly to the children whose magic manifested too strongly for their non-magic family or friends. Frightened by magic, by their power, some bimabeobs would try to eradicate it from kids. He never told them how much pain and humiliation it would take, to rip magic from someone, to shatter their soul, to break the unbreakable. He never told them. She didn't want to know.

The boy caught her watching him one evening. Startled, he tried to hide himself even more, curving his body, bowing his shoulders, hiding his eyes behind black hair.

"Would you like to change the firedrakes’ water? I think it's a little old." She asked quietly. She needed to focus on his voice to hear his whispered, "Yes, Ma'am."

After that Credence joined them, slipping into their crew like a missing puzzle piece. Taking care of animals and inhumans, cleaning cages, and sleeping on the floor near her bed. One night he cried in his sleep, his Bunridoenyeong flowing around him, sharp and menacing, threatening everybody with vicious tendrils of shadow. She gathered all her courage and took Credence's hand, cradling it into her chest, to her heart, and she whispered his name until his body relaxed. Bunridoenyeong still dancing around them, seeking something, anything to kill, but the dream itself not strong enough to release it.

She spent the whole night holding his hand, counting his breaths, and slowing her own to soothe him, whispering sweet nothings into his ear till he fell asleep again. The entire time, black shadows danced around them, gathering scraps, splinters, pieces, creating its own maelstrom of pain and brokenness from their group of castaways.

"I need him trained." Skender watched as Credence cleaned cages, gently moving tails, paws, and whiskers to not step on them.

"Train…? You want him to perform? It's impossible, you know what he is."

"Of course, I want an Obscurus on stage. I would be mad not to." Skender moved his eyes on her, pinning her with their unmoved stillness. "But even I ain’t greedy enough to try it. I want you to train him - not to perform, but to survive. Or I'll kill him before he kills anybody."

"He's not dangerous!"

"Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Maybe he doesn't want to be dangerous. But he's not safe. Train him or I'll kill him."

She had no idea how to explain to him that Credence never will be "safe", that the Bunridoenyeong is not an animal to train, but a force of nature. That what was done to him, how it was done, shattered his soul and he shouldn't be even alive now. But he had survived and he distanced himself from his magic - making it more alive, more self-conscious, more sentient, possibly even sapient.

And for a moment she was again in her class, listening to the calming cadence of the teacher’s lectures.

_"When you encounter Bunridoenyeong, you need to remember that nothing in these children is evil or malicious. Their volatile nature is a sign of imbalance, the war between soul and expectations forced upon them. It's extremely important that you not try to fix this person by yourself. With your only academic knowledge, you simply have no measures to do that.  If any of you is interested in this particular route of healing, I will provide a list of experts that are also willing to take a student."_

She never was more conscious of her unfinished training than now, observing Credence and waiting for the inevitable crash. She helped him how she could best - soothing his nightmares, talking him down from his terrors, shielding him from others. And it worked a little. Credence slept through most nights and only once did the Bunridoenyeong come to life. She talked to him and listened to his words, they held each other together, two strangers in a strange world. Credence wanted family, she wanted… she had no idea what she wanted anymore, and that woke her from years of following the path that was chosen for her.

One night, insomnia seized her and she laid in her bed, unseeing eyes wide open and mind focused on one thing, one dream, her broken healer career. In the darkness she let herself dream again, imagining herself with her father, helping him with patients, arguing and working together, imagining herself in her own hospital, introducing herself proudly as Ha Young-ae, the chief healer. And if she cried a little, it was between her and the night.

 

Paris was ugly. Rain and clouds, bricks and stone. Ugly people and their need for entertainment, for somebody else's pain, when they gawked at her, when they threw stones at Kappa, when they tried to cut the silk from the poor zouwu’s tail. She hated Paris.

After the show, she unwrapped her jeogiri and chima, filling her senses with silken smoothness and, between their folds scented with lavender, she found her wand. Disguised as binyeo, a hairpin popular even among non-magic people, wands could be worn openly, but she had hidden hers for so long. Now, running fingertips along smooth wood and brass, watching blue sparks playing between her fingers, feeling the bright presence her magic greeted her with, she promised herself - she will abandon her life as a spy, she will return to Korea, and she will become a healer, just like she always dreamed.

With a plan for a future and with trembling hands, she healed the broken scales on Kappa's arm, feeling joyous and powerful, and she pocketed her wand in the holster sewn in the lining along her thigh.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you would like this story. Please, let me know, leaving a kudos or comment, or both (both is good!). 
> 
> Some words: 
> 
> Bunridoenyeong (분리된영; a separated soul) - Obscurus  
> bimabeobjeokin or simply bimabeob (비마법적인 or 비마법) - non-magic person
> 
> jeogori - upper garment  
> chima - skirt (ofc, it's simplified, just google it and see)
> 
> binyeo is a hairpin, so I corrected this


End file.
